Words of joy, words of sorrow...

For those who best express things through the written word, triumph and tragedy are the greatest challenges. How can one capture either the heights of elation or the bitterness of mourning that are, literally, beyond words? Yet it is those time when the wordsmith is most needed, for it is those times when people desperately seek to bridge the gulf between what they are feeling and what they can express. This is almost the definition of art itself, for it is from the extremes of human experience that the majority of great art finds it richest resource. Now, I can assure you that I do not consider myself a literary great. But I do consider myself as someone who best expresses themselves through writing. I write in various forms – song lyrics, poems, analysis & opinion (i.e. blogging) and have a couple of nascent novel ideas. The past couple of weeks I have seen a flurry of writing that I’ve not experienced for a long while; not incidentally there have simultaneously been things of both great joy and sorrow going on. The point of these musings? I have come to appreciate afresh that writing is a powerful, valuable, God-given entity that has a life-affirming and healing power both for the author and those far beyond; the ability to connect in the midst of our brightest and darkest hours.

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Continuing on the theme of the power of writing, I recently came across this astonishing quote from Victor Hugo that I had to share: “I feel within me that future life. I am like a forest that has been razed; the new shoots are stronger and brighter. I shall most certainly rise toward the heavens the nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me. For half a century I have been translating my thoughts into prose and verse: history, drama, philosophy, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song; all of these I have tried. But I feel I haven’t given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say, as others have said, “my day’s work is done”. But what I cannot say, “my life is done”. My work will recommence the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes upon the twilight, but opens upon the dawn.”